REVIEW: Stirring Up Trouble by Andrea Laurence

Stirring Up Trouble by Andrea Laurence: Maddie, a baker from a prominent family in town, moves across the street from Emmett’s bar. With the encouragement of one of her customers, she calls the police to file noise compliant after noise compliant. They both end up arrested, by Maddie’s brother no less, for disturbing the peace and are forced to do community service together.

Maddie took time to grow on me. At first she comes across as entitled, snooty, and downright miserable. She complains about the noise from the bar, but what did she really expect when she bought the house across the street from it? That people leaving the bar would be quiet and there’d be no music? It was an unrealistic expectation if that’s the case.

I did find myself feeling for her. She has trust issues because people used her in the past, simply to try to get in with her family and their money. When she realizes that she had been a bully in the past, she takes on a high school assistant that was being bullied and stood up for her. She realized her past mistakes, tired to make amends, and tried to become a better person.

Emmett was laid back, not letting the feud, or getting arrested, bother him. He goes with the flow, trying to break down Maddie’s walls. He recognizes that beneath her gruff exterior, she’s hiding something that had happened to her. He could recognize the signs because he was hiding a secret of his own. I didn’t really understand why Emmett tried to keep his past a secret, because it wasn’t anything to be ashamed about. It just seemed unnecessary to hide who he was.

Emmett and Maddie spend their community service spending time cleaning up what the town had dubbed “The Penis Picasso.” While a bit childish, it was also entertaining. As the book progresses, the artwork gets funnier with the additions of things related to the buildings it was painted on. When Emmett and Maddie decide to do a stakeout to try to catch the Picasso because they were tired of cleaning up after him, Maddie finds herself the victim of his artwork.

There, she could tell exactly why everyone was staring at her car. The Penis Picasso had spray-painted a giant penis wearing an apron on the hood of her Mercedes.

I found the side story about Logan, the surprise half-brother, interesting. It forced Maddie to realize her father wasn’t the perfect person she projected him to be, which caused her to believe that yet another man had lied to her. I would have liked, however, to have seen some closure between Maddie and her father. They have a brief discussion, but she doesn’t seem to forgive him for keeping Logan a secret and it felt a bit unresolved. I’m looking forward to a book about Logan to see if he can forgive his father as well, because he’s holding on to a lot of anger and resentment.

Stirring Up Trouble is the third book in the series but it can be read as a stand alone. I haven’t read the first two books in the series, which are about two of Maddie’s brothers, but I enjoyed this one so I’m going to go back and read them.

If you’re looking for some laughs with your romance, I recommend giving Stirring Up Trouble by Andrea Laurence a try. Be prepared, however, to be frustrated with Maddie, especially towards the beginning. She does get better though as the story moves ahead.
 

Book Info:

Publication: October 12, 2015 | Pocket Star | Rosewood #3

When a prim and proper baker and a laid-back bartender have a neighborly disagreement that gets them both in trouble with the law, a sweet reconciliation is stirred up in the playful third romance in Andrea Laurence’s sexy Rosewood series.

Maddie’s life is perfectly sweet. Her bakery’s tasty treats are rising to the top of every must-have list in town, and her commute is just a block away by foot. She loves everything about her little downtown Victorian bungalow—except for her unbearably noisy neighbor, Woody’s. The bar’s obnoxious and sexy owner, Emmett, seems to live to aggravate Maddie. But he mostly thinks she could use a stiff drink to dislodge the stick up her ass. He’s just trying to run his business. Bars stay open late, they play music, they serve alcohol. If she doesn’t like it, why did she buy a house across the street?

When Maddie and Emmett’s battle lands them in front of the local judge, they’re ordered to do several weeks of community service cleaning parks and painting over graffiti. As they scrub away the latest works of art by the town’s anonymous “Penis Picasso,” the baker and the bartender slowly begin to see there’s more to each other than meets the eye. So what happens if they wave the white flag and surrender into each other’s arms?